Definitions

What do we mean by Horror, Crime, and Exploitation?

Crime and Exploitation are generally easy to spot, Horror has a much more free flowing definition. However, each of these tend to contain similar themes and violence, and many are often shifted between the genres by various reviewers and websites. Of course no genre is ever a fully defined thing, and many narratives may have elements of each genre. However, for the purposes of this blog the definitions will be used as follows.

Crime: Narratives heavily involving crime. However, on this blog will mostly be exploitation, thrillers and neo noir as opposed to mysteries and crime drama.

Exploitation is a bit fuzzier. Here will be Ozploitation, Blaxploitation, and the ultra violent action film. These tend to focus on taking violence to extremes, often to the point they are placed with horror.

Horror is a heavily contested genre. Noel Carroll famously deemed horror to be films which contain monsters that are viewed by the characters as being outside normality. TCM states horror is any film which uses primal fear to frighten viewers. This blog will use a definition somewhere between the two. For now, the best definition I can give is “I know it when I see it”. Expect this to be more useful in the future.

More definitions to come.